ArchiTeam Newsletter

Alison Brooks on Architecture and Sustainability

How do you imagine a future in which sustainability pervades all forms of architecture and design, where it is unquestioned, and the norm?

Future is starting to happen in a lot of cities in Europe and in North America, especially Northern Europe like Denmark and Sweden and Norway and Germany have been at the forefront of sustainable design and architects really since the 1970’s have been doing eco-architecture. More in more in the developed world sustainability is the norm and the field that I work in, in housing and urban regeneration and public buildings in the UK; we have to fulfill so many criteria for sustainability, just as the baseline. The bigger problem is in the developing world; to chive the standards of sustainability is very expensive and there’s going to be a long time through bringing the world’s entire built environment to a base standard of sustainability. It’s a long project but I think in Europe it’s becoming the norm.

In recent years attention turns to green urban regeneration. Do you think that it is imperative for the city or it’s just a new fashion with economic outcomes and covertly interests?

Urban regeneration is essential at this time, not just for improving the way the city looks, but it’s really a fundamental part of improving the economic and the social quality of life for people who are often in the lowest economic circumstances, and who live in sort of deprived environment. A lot of this is the legacy of the post- war reconstruction period, where the sort of urban planning principals were in a big experiment, and a lot of urban failures it back into the city so that became part of a regular number of streets and neighborhoods and communities that are in diverse. That’s what the kind of projects or the estates, built in the post- war period, don’t do. For example, on London today there are many regeneration projects that are really restoring and heeling kind of gaping wounds that were made in the urban fabric in the last 50 years and it’s a really important issue.

Does Architecture as a profession need empowerment? In which ways should this be done?

Definitely architecture as a profession needs empowerment; it should be self- empowering somehow. We have to become better at proving to our clients and to our society that design adds value, like huge economic value and sustainability, beautifully designed, well designed, sustainable, long-lasting, timeless architecture is part of our culture, is part of our society and generally when things are well designed and well made they can come and add more value. So we should communicate the value that we add better, and start to be a little bit more business minded in the way we have to describe the real value that it brings to people’s lives more effectively.

Is the world financial crisis an opportunity for everyone to reconsider the ways that we design and construct the buildings and the urban environment?

The financial crisis is a good wake-up call to a kind of attitude of unlimited possibility in a way; sort of example is Dubai where every building is iconic, everything tries to rival the World Trade Centre, a kind of globalised image of success that is not responsive to the cultures, to the climate, to the societies where these sort of icons and buildings are being built. Now there’s a kid of understanding that we need to just be more responsible as a society and responsible to the environment to subsequent generations. So, for example, building zero carbon buildings is something that completely has to take over things like commercial office building. I don’t think that commercial office buildings at the moment really are anymore near zero carbon sustainable, most of them that are built. And there’s a kind of disconnect between regeneration and public buildings. There are two such of rules that there is a need to be a more powerful voice that makes everybody dancing to the same tune when it comes to environmental responsibility.

Alison Brooks

Alison Brooks Architects is recognised as one of the UK’s leading architectural talents since being founded in 1996. ABA is the first UK practice to have won the UK’s three most prestigious awards for architecture – the Stirling Prize for Acordia Cambridge, with FCB and MLA (2008), the Manser Medal for Salt House (2007), and the Stephen Lawrence Prize for Wrap House (2006).An intensely site-specific approach, drawing upon the broader cultural context of each project, has generated a continuously experimental and award winning body of work. ABA’s belief in the transformative power of architecture underlies a commitment to housing design and its role in defining the character and sustainability of our cities. Recent competition wins for major residential schemes include the South Acton, South Kilburn and the Gateshead BIG regeneration projects. ABA has also been selected to design a new residential quarter in Bath’s UNESCO World Heritage site.

With their focus expanding to higher education and arts buildings, ABA has recently won national competitions for the University of Northampton Masterplan and the Bridgwater Performing Arts Centre. ABA’s Folkstone Quarterhouse Performing Arts Centre received a 2009 RIBA National Award and the 2010 Kent Design Award for best Public Building.

In 2010 ABA’s Audi Urban Future project for collaborative mobility and sustainable urban growth was exhibited at the VIth Internationa lVenice Architecture Biennale. Alison Brooks Architects’ completed buildings have twice featured in the Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture.

Alison Brooks – Profile
Canadian born and educated at the University of Waterloo, she moved to the UK in 1989 to form a partnership in Ron Arad Associates. In 1996 she founded Alison Brooks Architects Ltd., an award-winning practice operating from Highgate Studios in London.

She is a CABE National Design Review Panel member, sits on the RIBA Awards Group and in 2011 was a member of the RIBA Stirling Prize Jury. She has held a Diploma Unit Master teaching position at the Architectural Association ands erved as External Examiner at Universities of Bath and Lincoln. She has been juror for the Housing Design Awards and Young Architect of the Year Awards, in which she was a finalist in 1999. In 2008 she was keynote speaker at the RIBA International Conference in Barcelona as well as the RIAS and RIAW conferences. She lectures internationally on architecture and urbanism.